Tue, Sep 16, 2008 - Page 1 News List

Four dead, 17 injured in Sinlaku’s wake

HEAVY CONSEQUENCES Officials were in the process of closing Houfeng Bridge when rushing water brought part of the structure down, along with three vehicles

By Shelley Shan and Flora Wang  /  STAFF REPORTER, WITH CNA

While working to fix the broken water line, the state-run Taiwan Water Corporation found that the supply to Changhua would not be restored until Thursday, the report said.

Water supplies to other areas were also disrupted, including the Shuangsi Community (雙溪) in Taipei County, Guosing Township (國姓) in Nantou County, some communities in Hsinchu’s Jianshih Township (尖石), as well as in Nantou’s Hsinyi Township (信義), Ilan’s Tungshan (冬山) and Taoyuan’s Dasi Township (大溪), the report said.

In related news, China evacuated about 460,000 people from two eastern provinces as the outer bands of Tropical Storm Sinlaku battered the coast after it pummeled Taiwan.

Heavy rain yesterday lashed eastern and northern Zhejiang, where about 230,000 people have been moved, and northern parts of Fujian, where another 230,000 people left, the official Xinhua news agency reported, citing flood control headquarters. Some 30,000 fishing boats were recalled to harbor in Zhejiang.

Sinlaku weakened from a typhoon at 8am yesterday and was about 196km southeast of Wenzhou in Zhejiang and moving north at 5kph, Xinhua cited local weather authorities as saying.

The storm probably won’t make landfall in China, according to a graphic on the center’s Web site. It was heading northeast and its eye was forecast to brush the southern tip of Japan’s Kyushu island later this week. On its current path the storm will pass south of Tokyo.

Sinlaku, the 15th storm of the northwest Pacific cyclone season, is the name of a goddess worshipped on the island of Kosrae in Micronesia, said the Hong Kong Observatory, which lists tropical cyclone names in use in the Pacific.

Additional reporting by Bloomberg

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